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Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 1:20 pm**

I bought my wife a Dell XPS 13 back in March. It was a new machine, and cost about $1300 iirc for a decently loaded one (upgrade processor, 4GB RAM, etc).

The thing runs HOT. Uncomfortably hot.

The thing has soft buttons built-in to control things like the wireless adapter, etc. These very often just stop working, turning off the wireless adapter with them. There is no override, only a reboot fixes it.

In May, the hard drive failed. Only, no diagnostic on the machine would say there was a hard drive issue. Only after 2 hours with tech support, and me getting pretty... demanding, yet civil-ish, did they agree to send a new hard drive. The woman actually said that the problems could be caused by any software I had installed. I said I had only installed FireFox and MS Office (true), she said I should stick to the original configuration.

Yesterday, the bloody thing broke again. Wouldn't boot, kept going to the Windows Startup Repair, which said it couldn't repair dick. It couldn't even boot to safe mode.

2 more hours with tech support - again, NO issues found with anything in the testing. I asked for a new laptop. No. But tech support eventually agreed to give me a new hard drive and new RAM.

So I fired off a pissed-off email to michael@dell.com, explaining what a lemon I'd been sold, and how poorly they were reacting to the situation.

Today, I received a phone call in response, and they will be sending out a brand new replacement machine within the week.

On the one hand, I'm relieved to get a brand new machine. On the other, I'm still disappointed it took so much venting to get what I'd wanted.

Edited By TheCatt on 1250011420

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 1:28 pm**

Ha, funny guess on the email.

I did that sort of thing to Valve software after Half Life came out, and the office manager actually thought I was someone in the office asking where the post-it notes were kept.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 2:34 pm**

I am not a fan of Dell's XPS line. They claim to be custom built machines and are ideal for gamers. Horseshit.

The custom build is one of a handful that they've already built.

On top of that, of the two XPS systems I've had, both have overheated, both have had motherboards go back, one has had memory go bad. I won't even go into the errors with the initial build on the second machine.

This is all within a 5 year span on two different XPS machines.

Dell's business line is as good as their XPS line is bad.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 2:37 pm**

I believe MD had a mobo go bad on an XPS she bought. Refurbished.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 3:16 pm**

This was our second XPS for my wife. The other was a refurb 12.1. The battery on that one died, so I bought a replacement. Didn't work. So I RMA'd it, and got another battery. Didn't work. Concluded that the charging mechanism was just screwed. Gave it away for free.

This was the replacement machine.

The more I think about it, the more I wish I'd at least asked about getting another model. I really don't want to be stuck with the same thing, should it have issues too. I doubt they would have done it, but you never know.

My XPS 420 desktop behaved fine. My only issues with it were 1) limited amount of hard-drive space, and 2) crazy-ass BTX motherboard instead of ATX.

Yeah, the Dell business line machines I've had have been solid. At my previous work, out of 13 laptops and 24 desktops, our one issue was a single bad harddrive. Out of 12 servers we bought, the only issue we had was 1 bad NIC. This was over 2 years.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 4:09 pm**

My wife's XPS was a trooper. Ran well and hard for about 3 years. Recently ebay'd it. Only issues it had were that the fancy/fun lights that you could change to suit your mood started going bad. Other issue was the charger's cord frayed inside the jacket and I had to split it open and repair it. Chalked that up to normal wear and tear on the wire. PC ran well though. It did run hot though. But it never caused any issues.

Recently bought one of those tiny Hybrid desktops for her dad though. It was having a funky boot up issue. About 1 out of 35 boots would hang for about 20 minutes. He didn't like it doing that (I would have just rebooted and dealt with it). So my wife and I (mostly my wife) spent HOURS on the phone with Dell. Restoring factory defaults. Stripping out all the services (that Vista loads/starts by default) etc. Issue wouldn't go away. They'd have us do the same thing over and over. Demanded to be escelated up the chain. They would with strong resistance. Long story short, we got a refurb'ed machine. Good news is, it was long enough after original purchase, that it was basically a new model. Same case, but new mobo, memory, etc. So, the guts were all different. Issue has not been reported. However, we aren't sure he's even using it. Due to this experience, I have no desire to ever buy a Dell again. It would have to be a VERY good deal for me to consider it. I will pay more for a competitor's product. The most insulting thing was that the issue went on for so long that their system was alerting them that our warrenty was nearing experation. So they would ask us if we wanted to pay to extend it. My answer was always "You aren't fixing it in the current warrenty period. Why in the hell would I pay more money for you to not fix it?" I would continue to let them know how fucked up that question was until they appologized for asking. This would happen each time we called in.

Holy fuck. Dell's tech support sucks major donkey AND whale dick.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 5:32 pm**

Yeah it does. The corporate double plus gold super platinum support is about the only support of Dell I've enjoyed.

Too bad it costs a fortune. The funny thing is that the XPS line is supposed to have premium tech support. My ass.

Posted: **Tue Aug 11, 2009 6:03 pm**

I've had no problems at all with my new $129 Asus. It's awesome!

I'm going to add a touchpanel to it in a couple of weeks.

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Dell Studio XPS 13 - and tech support